“Drude?” Wren echoed, astonished but by no means averse to the idea. He’d no notion that the incubus even remembered their encounter at Mabon—though Wren recalled it very well himself, with a blush borne of pleasure rather than shame—much less thought well enough of him to want to visit in his convalescence.
“They won’t take offence if you’re not well enough for visitors,” said Shrike, rousing Wren from his contemplative fugue. Evidently he’d taken a touch too long to answer him. Still, rather than any expression of impatience, Shrike wore an encouraging smile.
“I’m well enough, I think,” Wren replied, drawing himself up on his arms to lean back against the pillows in an almost-upright posture.
Shrike’s smile broadened. He opened the cottage door just far enough to poke his head out and say something beyond the range of Wren’s hearing. When he withdrew into the cottage once more, the door opened in his wake. The diminutive ambassador skipped over the threshold with Drude’s massive crimson bulk following him.
Wren had never beheld so many folk in Blackthorn cottage at once. It ought to have felt crowded. Instead, he found it rather cosy. He had but a glimpse of the ambassador—a cheerful wrist-twirling wave paired with a trilled greeting—before Everilda arose to join him in earnest conversation at the work-bench. Shrike followed.
Drude, meanwhile, after taking an admiring glance around the cottage, made a bee-line for the nest. He had to crouch to keep his horns from knocking things down off the beams as he went but appeared nonetheless cheerful as he knelt at Wren’s bedside.
“Good evening, my lord,” he said, his voice as deep and sonorous as Wren remembered, though under very different circumstances. “I hope the night finds you well.”
“Better than I was,” Wren admitted. He ought to have felt more nervous than he did, he thought distantly. Perhaps it was the laudanum. Or perhaps it was because both the ambassador and Drude were fae, and thus like Nell cared not for mortal qualms. Or perhaps it was because the ambassador had already witnessed the solstice ritual, and Drude had taken Wren inside him not half a year past. Modesty felt a touch foolish at this point. He supposed he needn’t stand on ceremony with him. Though he would’ve rather stood before him and at least appeared strong rather than lain weak as cobwebs in his nightshirt. “And yourself likewise?”
“Very well,” Drude rumbled. “Our herds gave plenty of wool this year, so there’s more than enough to keep me at my loom.”
“You’re a weaver?” Wren said, as if that weren’t obvious. He blamed the laudanum.
Drude didn’t look as though he considered the question stupid. If anything, he appeared bashful. “And thread-spinner. And a shepherd in the summer months, when they need more hands.”
Wren’s gaze fell to Drude’s garb. At Mabon he’d worn a thin white shirt, black woollen breeches, and naught else. Now, however, Wren realised he had on a black woollen waistcoatwith its hems trimmed in embroidered tulips as scarlet as his own natural coat. “Did you do this yourself?”
“Aye,” Drude said, sounding almost shy.
Wren wondered if unfounded modesty regarding one’s own talents was a prevalent trait amongst the fae. Shrike and Drude certainly held it in common. “It’s beautiful.”
Drude mumbled his thanks.
“Forgive me,” Wren continued. “I know nothing of the craft. How do you…?”
With some coaxing, Drude filled the better part of half an hour with almost everything Wren wished to learn of wool-working. His words came more readily as he went on, his voice growing stronger and his posture relaxing from his humble hunch into something more approaching ease. Only when a yawn escaped Wren did his hesitation return.
“Pardon,” Wren begged even as another yawn threatened to overtake him.
Drude didn’t seem to take it personally. “The hour grows late. I fear I’ve overtaxed you.”
“Not at all,” Wren protested. “It’s wonderful to have you visit. The days run together otherwise.”
He would’ve said more, and likely most of it ill-advised, of how it touched him to see Drude’s evident concern for his well-being, but Shrike had taken notice of the first yawn and arrived at Wren’s bedside by the second.
“All right?” he asked, laying a hand on Drude’s shoulder. Not a correcting hand, Wren noted, but rather a familiar one.
“I’m fine,” Wren said.
Drude arose regardless.
Without thinking, Wren reached to give him a parting handclasp.
And after a stunned blink, Drude returned it warmly.
Shrike smiled and slung his arm across Drude’s shoulders as he saw him out of the cottage, giving him a glance Wren had seen a hundred times before, one which said as well as words,Just as I told you.
Wren didn’t have long to wonder at it before sleep claimed him.
The next morning he awoke well after dawn. Drude had already set off, but the ambassador remained and regaled Wren with a steady stream of polite nonsense which Wren found very difficult to navigate under the influence of laudanum. Shrike coaxed the ambassador away from Wren’s bedside with the prospect of comparing notes on their progress with letters—both were literate by now, but their reading tastes differed, which gave ample points for comparison and discussion. At any rate they conversed low enough for Wren to fall asleep again.
And when he opened his eyes that evening, he found Drude returned with a hamper full of what seemed to be at least a dozen pounds of butter.
